I think if Johan has any reservations at all, then we shouldn't even call the mascot Alex or use any of his original bitmap versions. Plus Dennis could take a bit more creative liberty with the alligator's look so as not to blatantly copy the original sprite +......+ It's against the whole nature of Allegro.

I couldn't agree more..

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"The unlimited potential has been replaced by the concrete reality of what I programmed today." - Jordan Mechner.

I assumed Johan had given us the pixelated version under the Allegro license (i.e. anyone can modify and redistribute it) a long time ago, else we never should have put it into the distribution. The file is called "alex.png" and "alex.xpm" in SVN - so if we are not allowed to use that name, we need to change it (e.g. to "logo.png" and "logo.xpm"). And the new mascot should definitely have all the points raised by Dennis allowed, i.e. it should be compatible with Allegro's license.

I must say, things are not moving fast enough here. (No decisions are being made and that can't go on forever. We need a dictator/fearless leader for "art" that comes with the lib.)

We've been discussing on IRC this morning, that it might be wise to brainstorm and create an entirely new character, whose sole purpose of existance it would be to be the mascot for Allegro. That way, we could give that new character away freely within the Allegro giftware license.

So far, there have been suggestions to make a new Allegator and just not call him Alex (but that would be quite lame and cheap).Another suggestion was an Alley-Cat or some sort of bird(an Albatross perhaps).(puns were made: Allegro - Free Like A Bird, Allegro - Free As In Bird(not beer))

Well, most of that discussion was probably just joking around but I for one do think that the idea of having a unique new character(created/chosen by the community) as the mascot is good.

There was also the idea to have that character depicted in various different activities which could be used as header-images to various sections of the manual.(Matt had already created a few sketches with an Allegator for that purpose:one,two,three,four)

Another idea that has been brought up was that the mascot could lead through a few short introductional tutorials about using the library, which I think is a very good idea.

Well... brainstorm away! Suggest an animal+name which should become the Allegro mascot! Also give some reason why you think that the animal you suggest would be a good mascot for Allegro and give some characteristic properties that the mascot should have. (examples from the Wikipedia mascot page: "Wikipede is male, bookish, and an individualist." "The Miwiki ant is innocent, wide-eyed, androgynous, and collectivist.")

At least we need to make a decision about whether the terms for using Alex the Allegator logo are acceptable or not.

And looking at this thread, I think the consensus is that we can't do that without changing the allegro license, which is not desirable.

So can we at least make the decision not to use Alex the Allegator? Then we could drop that and move on to the next question: finding a suitable alternative.

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It is unfortunate, but I don't think we can get around the fact that it is a lengthy process to choose a logo. Allegro has no Benevolent Dictator, so the only way we can make decisions is by consensus.

It seems to me a lot of the logo's here can't be used because they use a non-free font. Can we at least sort out the ones with problems like that?

Well, in absence of there being a "new" dictator, I sort of feel the position is still mine, which makes me feel bad because I don't have enough time for it at the moment. Peter is managing the releases at the moment, which is probably one of the more annoying aspects. Then again, it's not necessarily the Dictator's responsibility to do this.

If anyone want to volunteer, they should post on the mailing list so we can have some discussion (if necessary). We might also discuss what sort of things the Dictator is responsible for. IRC would be ok for doing that if a meeting is ever held at a time when I can actually attend.